UNIX-WIZARDS Digest V1#112 (NIH)

[x0705]

> > There may be some "NIH" syndrome at work, but you should also appreciate
> > that BSD software is not necessarily up to commercial standards, so it
> > might need some adaptation before being supported by a commercial outfit.
> 
> There's no commercial reason for changing the name of Mail to mailx, or
> TURNING OFF the use of '.' as well as '~.' to terminate a message, or
> rehacking the terminal driver so V7
> programs no longer work, and so on. Like it or no, at the time Bell came
> out with System III, THE standard system in the real world was V7. There
> is no good excuse for making SIII incompatible with V7. Or for
> makeing SV incompatible with SIII.
> 	Peter da Silva (the mad Australian)
## Disclaimer line so I can flame at you without implying my employer's
## participation in these flames.
----
Well, I don't know why they changed the name, but the ~. versus . is a settable
option under Mail*  - include the line
	set  dot 
in your .mailrc file, and alias Mail=mailx if you really care about the name.
----
As for the terminal driver, some of us *like* the System III based drivers
better than the V7/4.1/4.2BSD versions.  The driver changes were made for a lot
of good reasons, and with at least some thought about the pain they'd cause.
As for System V being incompatible with System III, upward compatible is always
non-downward-compatible.   What is there that used to work under System III
that's broken now?  If you want to flame about how changing things is, look at
the change from 4.1BSD to 4.2BSD!

*( on our exptools systems, Mail is the most current release
of mail, while mailx is the officially distributed version)

-- 
## Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs